


Contract

by valderys



Category: Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Amnesty, Gen, Unfinished and Discontinued, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-26
Updated: 2010-07-26
Packaged: 2017-10-10 19:48:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/103622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valderys/pseuds/valderys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his father's death, Merry has some decisions to make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Contract

**Author's Note:**

> This is sadly never going to be finished - I don't post chaptered or unfinished fic any more almost entirely due to 'Contract'. I really intended to get back to it, I know where the story was going to go and everything - but I never did manage to go back to it, and I wrote it in 2004! I still like it though, which is why I'm still posting it here, and I have written another note at the end to explain where the plot would have gone.

The clock ticked and then chimed the hour, loud and echoing in the too silent room. Dressed in his livery, neat, curls smoothed away from his forehead, face pale but composed, Merry stared at his mother across the desk, papers crumpled in his hand. There were still traces of tears on her face, a small linen handkerchief clutched limply in her hand. Blindly Merry looked across the room, seeking he knew not what from his cousin, but Berry stared back, equally mute, an unspoken sympathy and deeper worry chasing themselves in turn across his face. Seredic, called uncle for respect of his age and position but properly another cousin, and the only other hobbit in the room, cleared his throat and then took the poker and began to stir up the coals of the fire.

"It can't be true."

Merry felt his voice was too loud. Or was that the echo in his skull that he could hear? It all seemed very far away.

"It's all there in front of you, Merry." Seredic was gruff, embarrassment making him uncomfortable, and once again Merry stared down unseeing at the pile of bills and notes of hand, and other legal documents on the desk in front of him. The red ink stood out bright as blood in the dimness of the room.

"I'm not…" He started again, refusing to let his voice shake. "It seems I'm not as familiar with matters of business as I should be, I see. Could you just explain it simply to me, Seredic, please?"

"Well, Sara was… Sara was perhaps not as careful as he could have been, Merry. He always thought things would come right again, you see. A change of fortune was always just around the corner, for him. You know what he was like."

"Yes, of course."

And he did, of course he did, none better. Without warning, images chased themselves across his memory - Papa throwing a very small Merry into the air and catching him again, ruddy face laughing, chestnut hair wild; Papa bringing him his first pony, magnificent, beautiful, but a beast so spirited that Merry never rode him; Papa welcoming him home from his year away in the world, and throwing the biggest party since Bilbo's famous disappearance. Papa lying wrapped in his shroud, peaceful, seeming smaller than he ever had in life. The gentle rain at the simple ceremony, the daffodils dripping water as Merry scattered them on the turned earth. It had looked to Merry as though they too wept.

Merry felt his hands tremble and to disguise it, rubbed them on the cloth of his trousers. He found the wool still damp from the rain this morning. Absently the thought went through his mind that he would have to oil the armour, or parts of it would rust, and the leather would maybe crack, he could ask in the kitchens, perhaps, for… He realised he still hadn't read one word of the papers in front of him.

He looked at Seredic again and smiled, a stretched unnatural thing, but a smile none the less.

"Forgive me, Seredic, you must think me terribly stupid, but you see, Papa kept me occupied with running the estates and the lands. The breeding programs and the harvest have been my chief concern until now – he never consulted me on financial matters."

"Yes, well, that may well have been deliberate, hard though I find it to speak such an ill thing of your father."

Mama began quietly weeping again, stifling any noise with the handkerchief, and Seredic looked stricken. Merry signed to Berry to ring for a servant, and asked for tea when a small maid – Tilly was it? – turned up bobbing and curtseying. Through the open study door Merry could hear the murmuring sound of many hobbits at the wake. Saradoc had been a popular Master and had had a wide circle of friends. They had all turned up to honour him, and Merry found that their very presence here to pay their last respects eased his heart a little. The Brandybucks were hardly all alone in this trouble.

Merry waited until the maid had left the room before continuing, still trying to understand.

"So matters are… bad."

"Well. The harvest was good last year, and we have seed enough for this year, no one will starve…"

Seredic trailed off in the face of the suddenly fierce look.

"I know that." Merry said, trying for patience and failing. "I took care of all that myself. What of… all these?"

He scattered the papers in front of him with a shove. They rustled a little and one slid to the floor, the others drifted like leaves across the desk.

"Outstanding tradesmen's bills, debts, notes of hand on the loans, mortgages…"

"Mortgages!"

"Your father raised money when he needed it, in… many different ways, Merry."

"I can't believe he mortgaged the Hall!"

"Well, not the Hall, but any unencumbered land he could get at; the river meadows, pasturage rights…"

"And he never told anyone."

Seredic and Berry exchanged a look that Merry was quick to catch.

"I see. I am the only one not to know?"

Seredic threw his hands wide now, a look of pain carving the lines deeper on his aged face. "You must understand, Merry. Sara was so proud of you - all you did when you were off Wandering, the battle of Bywater, all the work you've put in since you came home. He didn't want you to worry." He stopped briefly and then went on in a quieter tone. "He always thought he could put it all right again, and after all, he was only in his middle years. Plenty of time. We all thought that."

Merry closed his eyes. "Plenty of time."

"I'm sorry, lad."

It shook him that, being called a lad, he hadn't been called such for a very long time… Suddenly he wanted to run out of the door and keep running, all the way to Gondor if he had to, anywhere in the world where he could look back and find that Papa was still alive, and Pippin wasn't married and a father himself, and Frodo was still in Bag End, and most particularly where he wasn't Master of Buckland, for better or worse, now with hundreds of hobbits in his care.

He opened his eyes again, to see three worried pairs of eyes staring back at him.

"I better get on and read these then. So I know where we stand." He smiled then, a proper smile this time, and saw them almost visibly relax. "I'm sure things will be fine, you know. We'll just have to tighten our belts for a few years, I expect. Nothing to worry about. Now then, if you would all excuse me, it seems I have some catching up to do…"

He got up and escorted them all to the door. Seredic left peering at him heavily from under his heavy brows. It was obvious the old hobbit had more to say but Merry hoped desperately he wouldn't say it, at least not yet. He needed time. Berry went looking relieved, and clasped his hand fiercely, as though trying to squeeze all the overflowing emotion into one handshake. Mama clung to his neck and Merry's heart constricted to feel her warm tears on his skin. He smoothed a hand over her grey hair – when had Mama's hair turned grey? – and pressed a kiss to her cheek. "Take care of our guests, Mama."

She nodded mutely and turned away, almost visibly collecting herself. Standing straighter and lifting her chin proudly, she was the perfect Mistress of Buckland once more when she strode from the room.

Merry was left alone. The clock ticked loudly, counting away the seconds before he had to face his future. Trying to delay the inevitable, Merry went to the hearth and began laying extra coal. He had just about finished poking the blaze as much as he could without actually putting it out, when there was a timid knock on the door. Welcoming the distraction, Merry strode to the door and swung it open to reveal the little maid with a tea tray. She jumped, and with a guilty pang, he immediately smoothed his features and tried a smile, realising he had been scowling fit to turn a troll to stone.

"Thank you, Tilly," he said, gently.

She bobbed a curtsey. "Will you be needin' anything else, Master?"

"No. No thank you."

She bobbed her head again and turned to go. Merry stared after her in a daze. He was the Master now. It was the first time he had ever heard the title used referring to him, Meriadoc Brandybuck, not Papa, not even Grandpapa. Him. The Master of Buckland. It still didn't seem real, but he had better get used to it, and quickly too.

"Knock, knock. May I come in?"

Merry swung back at the sound of that beloved voice, and this time he didn't have to force a smile. Pippin stood there grinning crookedly, dressed in his best silk waistcoat, a glass still clutched in his hand.

"Pip! Of course, come inside. Quickly, before any other relatives spot me – I can't face them yet."

He ushered the other into the study and hastily shut the door, then stood there and feasted his eyes on the well loved features. Pip older now of course, body broadened out into a proper hobbit form, brown curls no longer constantly rumpled, but the smile was always the same, promising mischief, and the green eyes were as bright as ever.

Pippin cocked his head. "You look terrible, Merry."

It surprised the ghost of a laugh out of him. "Well, thank you, Pip, it's nice to see you too."

And then without another word spoken he was within the circle of those well-remembered arms, the rough wool of Pip's coat close against his mouth, the tickle of brown curls against his cheek, and faintly the vanilla and apple scent that always spoke of home to Merry curling in his nostrils. He stood there for a long moment, just holding on, and then sighed.

"I'm glad you're here."

"Well, and where else would I be, when my Merry needs me?"

The Tuckborough burr was a little more pronounced with mock indignation, and unseen, Merry smiled into Pippin's coat. Finally, reluctantly, he drew back, and gently asked, "And where are Diamond and little Farry?"

Pip had the grace to look a touch sheepish. "Still at the wake. They'll be fine – Diamond's talking to Aunt Esme. It's how I knew you were free, Merry."

"Not free, never that."

Shadows chased themselves across his cousin's features before determinedly returning to cheerfulness, and only then did Merry realise he'd spoken aloud.

"I'm sorry," he added, although he wasn't sure for what.

"No, I'm sorry. Poor old Merry. It's a rotten time, and you have the worst of it."

Merry turned and walked back to the desk, bending to pick up the fallen paper on the way.

"No, the worst of it is here, I think."

Pippin followed him across the room and perched on the corner of the desk, bright eyes thoughtful.

"It's not just the funeral? You know, if I can help…?"

"I know."

He began sifting through the various documents, and started sorting them by date, the most urgent debts to be settled at the top. Pippin looked on, silent for once, as the piles grew. It didn't take long for Merry to be sick of the sight of red ink. Eventually, he threw himself into the chair behind him, and it creaked a little, the leather protesting. He ran his hands through his hair, no longer caring any more about appearances.

Quietly, Pippin said, "You should get out of that wet armour, Merry."

He looked up impatiently about to snap some irritable reply about ridiculous priorities, when he caught Pip's quick of look of concern, hurriedly masked. It stopped him, brought him back to where he was, and he forced a smile.

"This will keep. You're right. I should rejoin the guests. Can't avoid Great Aunt Hester forever."

"Oh, don't worry about that, Merry-mine, we'll face her together."

Pippin's eyes were solemn, in contrast to the warm smile he offered, and when Merry stood Pip tucked his arm into his cousin's, as he had done when he was very much younger.

"No facing down monsters without me. Not this time."

Merry found his throat thick with the tears he had not yet shed, and blindly he shook his head, unable to articulate any of the complicated and rushing feelings his dearest friend's unconditional support engendered in him. Companionably, they walked to the door and Merry took a deep wrenching breath before letting go.

"Time to face the monsters," he said, and watched the worry in Pip's green eyes grow a little less.

Despite the future, and its pitfalls, it seemed he could reassure everyone today, everyone except himself. Perhaps that was as it should be. He settled his shoulders more firmly, and straitened his spine, before he left the room. For better or worse, willing or unwilling, the future was there to be faced, and he would therefore face it. He had no choice. He, Meriadoc, was Master of Buckland now.

***

It just didn't add up. No matter how much Merry twisted the figures, and redid the sums, it still didn't add up. He had to face it. Buckland was bankrupt.

Sighing, the new Master pushed himself away from the table and went to stand by the window of the library. He looked out onto long lawns, just blushed with the first rose of sunset, and as he watched, a pair of tiny grubby hobbit lasses ran past laughing, chasing a ball. Merry watched them, his heart aching with sudden love and responsibility. If he didn't find a way through this, who knew where those two children would be sleeping come winter? He put a hand up and rubbed his eyes. He was growing fanciful, he told himself. It was not as though they were all going to be turned out of the Hall tomorrow, but the fact remained that if he didn't find a solution, it might yet happen, and he felt it keenly. The Brandybucks were hardly the only sprawling extended family in the Shire, just one of the oldest, and at the moment, poorest. There were plenty of other hobbit clans who could move in and feel right at home, would welcome it even, to be able to crow over how the mighty were fallen. A sudden fierce protectiveness washed over him then, not just for the hobbits in his care, but for the very stones and mortar themselves. Brandy Hall was also family, from the worn rug on the second stairs to the ancestral portraits of Brandybucks and Oldbucks hanging in the Whispering Gallery, but, even more than that, they were his to protect. His to succour. He could not, would not, let this happen.

Not for the first time, his thoughts turned to an image of his father, all red gold and laughing, and bitterly Merry felt these memories tarnishing. The more he delved into what Papa had been covering up, not just for a year or two, it seemed, but for _decades_, the colder Merry found he became. How could Papa have let things get in such a state? Easily, a small traitor voice under his breast whispered, Papa always lived for today, for next week, for next year. You knew that. Merry let out a small groan, unable to repress it. After all, it wasn't as if he was entirely blameless. He could have asked, he could have taken more of an interest in the financial side of things, he could have spent less money on the lands, on the herds. They might have the finest herd of breeding ponies in the Eastfarthing, but that would be small comfort if they couldn't keep the land. Merry's heart cried within him as he contemplated the piecemeal sale of his prized animals that would surely follow, and which wouldn't be a jot of help, knowing as he did that it couldn't possibly cover a tenth of the debts he'd been staring at all afternoon.

There was a small scraping sound near the door, and Merry came back to himself with a jolt, hoping his start had gone unseen. The library was here for everyone, of course, it just so happened that Merry didn't think anyone else used it much besides himself. After all, Brandybucks were not known for their bookish natures on the whole. His own study was too small, too enclosed, more often than not he felt he was choking in there, suffocated with responsibility, worn down by the constant juggling of figures, which seemed to be all he did lately. And, besides that, it reminded him all too forcefully of Papa.

He looked up and saw it was Seredic, lingering a little by the door, as though unsure of his welcome. His salt and pepper hair was tangled in his whitening eyebrows, he was frowning so, and it tugged a smile out of Merry. It did him good once in a while to remember he wasn't wrestling this particular monster alone.

"Seredic! Come in, do. I'm taking a little break. Shall I send for tea?"

Seredic cleared his throat, as though he were uncomfortable. "Well, I will, if I may. Wanted to talk to you, you see. Yes."

Merry was beginning to worry. His cousin was usually the most self-possessed hobbit, and to see him so on edge was strange.

"What on earth's wrong?"

Seredic looked genuinely startled at the question. "Oh, nothing's wrong, Merry. No, no, not at all. Just wanted to find out how things are going, that's all."

"Fine, fine. I'm getting my poor head around it all, a bit much at the beginning but I'm getting the hang of it now."

The glib phrases rolled effortlessly off the tongue, Merry thought. He had been asked such questions, or those like them, by so many people now, that it was becoming second nature, and all too often, this was all people needed to hear. Their faces would lighten, they'd clap him on the back or wring his hand, and then they would go away smiling. For now, he reminded himself.

He looked up into Seredic's too knowing eyes and realised that, for once, here was one hobbit who probably wouldn't be so fooled.

"And how do affairs stand?" Seredic asked quietly.

There fire in the grate suddenly popped and crackled, echoing into the silent room. Merry turned and looked out of the window, watching the shadows lengthen on the lawn.

"Badly, I'm afraid."

The starkness of the pronouncement shook even him. He took a breath and watched it mist up the pane in front of him, turning the deepening evening grey and shadowy.

"And I can see no way out of it without selling Brandy Hall," he admitted, his voice distant to his own ears.

A slight noise came from behind him that might have been a gasp, but he didn't turn to see.

"As bad as that."

"Worse."

There were hasty steps then, and the sound of a door closing. "My lad, have you told anyone?"

He turned then, to see Seredic slumping into one of several easy chairs that dotted the library, he looked white and abstracted.

"No. How can I? I've been wracking my brain to come up with a workable solution, one that will allow us keep the estates and the Hall intact, but there just isn't one, Seredic, there just _isn't_ one."

"It's good you haven't told anyone – not even your mother?"

"Of course I haven't told Mama, she's…," he swallowed hard before he continuing, "Mama is not herself these days." Merry was hard put to say quite why Mama's quiet ghostly ramrod-straight presence about the Hall worried him, but it did.

"Good. The last thing we need are rumours of financial ruin, or anything other than a united smiling front. That would be the worst thing at this point, I think."

Merry decided then and there that Seredic had cracked like an old pot, if he thought rumours were the worst of the dire straits they were in.

"What do you mean?"

He'd never noticed before but Seredic had the darkest eyes of any hobbit he'd yet met, they were unfathomable now, like deep pools, and he was frowning again.

"There is a solution, Merry."

"I tell you, there isn't. Not without…"

"May I be frank?"

The question stymied him. On what other occasion had his cousin ever been less than frank? He was looking uncomfortable again too. Seredic appeared to take his silence to be enough answer. He steepled his fingers and began.

"Unhappy situations like ours are not entirely unknown, you know, Merry. They are not as rare as you might suppose, but we take care of our own, quietly and without fuss, and solutions are found. After all, you don't see public auctions of a family's goods happening every day of the week, do you?" At Merry's silence he answered his own question, "No, of course you don't."

He paused a minute, seeming to grope for the right words. Merry found himself waiting on a most unpleasant tenterhook.

"Have you ever considered that our sadly fallen fortunes could be immediately resuscitated by the prudent adoption of a judicious alliance?"

"I beg your pardon? What?"

"A marriage, Merry."

Merry felt like he'd been pole-axed. Certainly whatever solution the old hobbit was going to suggest, he had never in his wildest nightmares contemplated this. He realised he must look something like a beached fish, because Seredic chuckled. "Surely it's not so strange a suggestion as all that, is it, lad? I know your mother has wanted such for any number of years past."

Well, that was certainly true. But for all her persistence, Merry had quietly ignored all the dropped hints and unsubtle introductions, hadn't even seriously thought about it. He'd been happy enough as he was, more than content when it was just him and Pippin at Crickhollow, pleased to be helping Papa with the estates, fascinated with breeding his ponies… Ah, but then Pippin had found his Diamond, hadn't he? And things had changed, it wasn't him and Pippin anymore, fitting like gloves together, needing nothing else, needing no-one else, things had changed. Pippin had changed. But Merry hadn't.

"No."

Seredic looked startled, as though the blunt reply was not what he was expecting.

"But, my boy…"

"No. I won't be put out to stud like some pony. I won't have all the Aunties whispering and plotting together, making the best match one day, only to do it all again tomorrow. I won't be giggled over, and fawned upon, and gossiped about. I won't be put up for _sale_."

"Merry, surely…?"

"No. There must be another way."

Seredic paused thoughtfully staring at him, and then heaved a resigned sigh.

"Well, I've said all I came to say. If your mind is made up…"

"It is."

"Then I'll leave you."

He went, carefully shutting the library door behind him on his way out, and Merry bit his lip, imagining the small sound as being more ominous than the final boom of rubble shutting the doors in Moria. Here be monsters, he thought, tense and oddly keyed up. And I've just been left to wrestle them alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Right then. This was intended to be a longish piece, and was sort of based on 'A Civil Contract' by Georgette Heyer. Merry was going to get increasingly desperate, while at the same time meeting again with Estella Bolger, who sympathises with Merry and explains that her own situation is not to be envied either. She has pots of money, and her dowry is even more, but she cannot touch any of it until she is married. Meanwhile Fatty, her brother, is making life very difficult, having never really recovered properly from his experiences during the war. She is looking for an escape and proposes a contract between them, a friendly arrangement that will suit them both.
> 
> Merry agonises, because he is still in love with Pippin in an unrequited way, but Pippin is getting on with his life with Diamond, and Merry is brought to realise the value of such a 'civil contract' as Estella is offering. It's a bittersweet story, but Merry is reconciled to his life by the end, because he is able to save all his hobbits from destitution, Brandybuck Hall from being sold, and Estella gives birth to their son.


End file.
